Like
most playground scuffles,
The things of importance are lost
In the rituals of naming:
“Transneptunian”? “dwarf”? “KBO”?
Though you hide in the Kuiper,
Far removed from the delicate
Balance of the Zone and the windy
Aura of Helios, you are
Half again as girthy as Pluto—
Massive enough, perhaps, to pull
On Space's strings and shroud
Yourself in a sheer soup of gas.
Surely, like Matoaka, you come
To illuminate the borderlands—
And to speak for your kin:
DW, Quaoar, Orcus, Sedna…
Copyright © 2007, Drew Morse
Image Credit: Ney Rothier Müller, some
rights reserved
Drew Morse received his Ph.D. in English Literature from the
University of Oregon. He is the author of A New Discipline of Vision,
a study of the relationship between poetics and science in contemporary
speculative verse. His poetry, essays and reviews have appeared in such
publications as Mythic Delirium, Illumen, Star*Line,
The Magazine of Speculative Poetry, and Timberline.
He has edited four anthologies of “genre” poetry, and has
served as the chair of the Rhysling Awards (for best SF/fantasy/horror
poetry) for the past four years. He and his wife, Marcy Hunt-Morse, live
near Cleveland, Ohio, where he directs the John Carroll University Writing
Center. Feel free to e-mail him at amorse@jcu.edu.
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